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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

New 3.2 Info: Professions, Heirlooms, and Squires

It is becoming clear that patch 3.2 is just a round the corner because the CM team is starting to release new information about the changes coming in the patch. I personally wouldn't be surprised if we saw patch notes released with in a week.

Anyway, none of the changes announced so far are Moonkin specific, but there are some interesting changes that you may want to pay attention to.

Professions:

When the next major content patch launches we will be introducing epic quality gems and updating the perks for each profession.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. I've long speculated that Blacksmithing will become the profession of choice because when Epic Gems are released there buff would go up while the buff of all other professions would would stay the same. Apparently, Blizzard realized this also and is buffing all of the professions except Blacksmithing. Don't expect the buffs to be huge, but an additional 8-10 spell power is nice.

The second thing I noticed about this change is that they are buffing the gathering professions as well has the crafting professions.

The benefits of the gathering professions are a bit situational for Caster DPS, but I really like the changes to Lifeblood. If you look back at some of my old comments on the ability you will see that I thought Herbalism got shafted. In it's current form Lifeblood is a week dot that didn't scale, and probably wouldn't save you from anything. Obviously I can't make any definite comments on it right now, but I think these changes are all moves in the right direction. The only other thing I would suggest is to make it a direct heal instead of a DoT.

Personally, I like all of these changes, but it throws some of my plans right out the window again. I had been planning to drop Herbalism at some point to pick up Jewelcrafting, because the prismatic gems were so awesome and lifeblood was so weak. Then they nerfed Jewelcrafting. Then I figured I would switch to Blacksmithing once the Epic gems were made available because lifeblood is so weak and I will get 8 more SP then I would with any other profession.

Now, it doesn't really seem to matter which profession you pick. I would get more DPS from a crafting profession and they would save me money on some items and enchants. However, I really like having an extra oh crap button on my bar, and if Lifebloom becomes decent it could be a powerful heal and a critical time. So, I'm back to square one. At this point I'll probably stick with Herbalism until I see a clear reason to switch.

Heirlooms & Squires:

One thing I can tell you is that chest piece heirlooms will be available in the next content patch. They will provide a 10% experience bonus that stacks with the shoulder bonus.

An Upgraded Squire: As any good squire should, this upgraded squire now has a mount and can be called forth every eight hours for three minutes of duty. The upgrade cost is 150 Champion Seals and your squire will also offer one of three services: bank, mail, or vendor access.

These changes have to do with the Argent Tournament, and I have to say I find them very distressing. Up until this point I have almost completely ignored the Argent Tournament and have been quite happy to do so. I don't really care about reps and the rewards didn't really interest me. So, I was quite happy to allow everyone else mess around with it while I raided and leveled new toons. Now that Blizzard is adding attractive rewards I feel like I have to participate in an event that I was otherwise happy to ignore.

When they first announced the new Heirloom items I assumed that they would be similar to the current set, but fill in some of the gaps. Now that we know there are new chest pieces and that they have a 10% experience buff that stacks with the shoulder buff, I have to pick it up. As you can tell, I like to have alts, but I also like to level them as quickly as possible. Having the extra 10% is not an option. Its a requirement.

I do hope that the chests aren't the only new Heirlooms. When I was looking at options for my Shaman, I realized that they are pretty limited. When leveling my shaman I've been using the caster items I already have, but it would be nice to have something that is designed a little better for a shaman.

The other big change I see is the Squire. Despite the child safety/labor concerns, I see this as a must have. Being able to access your bank, mail or vendors only once every 8 hours may not seem like a big deal to some, but I really want it. I currently lug around an entire Bear set on the off chance that my guild will need me. I could free up a lot of bag space by leaving it in the bank. Also, how many times have we bought something from the AH, or had something mailed from an alt but forgot to pick it up. A little bit of convenience goes a long way with me.

So, last night I made my way up to Icecrown and started doing dailies for the first time in months. Damn you Blizzard.

9 comments:

It's about time Lifeblood came back off the GCD. I forget what patch it was sheathed into but I was fuming when I found out. Now that they're taking it off again, my guess is that it was put on by accident.

I believe tailoring is by far and away the best choice for caster DPS at the moment - blowing everything else out of the water in terms of added DPS.

If you're going to switch out of herbalism, I suggest tailoring as your go-to option (and I might sound like an elitist raider, but any serious raider should have non-gathering professions outside of possibly tanks and mining).

I think Engineering is actually the way to go instead of a gathering profession. Hyperspeed Accelerators can be combined with every other eclipse proc, which is awesome. The cloak enchant which is currently second only to the tailoring (+23 sp) is an added bonus and the Nitro Boosts for boots I find more helpful that the normal boot enchant for fights when I find myself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That really depends on your other gearing, Flaresa. The Hyperspeed Accelerators share a linked cooldown with other similar on-use burst DPS trinkets, such as Living Flame or Scale of Fates. You won't be able to use both on the same cooldown stack. On the other hand, if you're just using passive on-proc trinkets, then yes they're a great choice. Personally, though, I would rather they buffed the cloak enchants; none of the glove enchants are really all that great for a tree druid like myself.

My sentiments exactly Graylo, on the issue of Argent Tournament. I have just started the dailies last week and got stuck at 5 Aspirant seals on the starting chain. I cannot afford to ignore the 10% exp gain for my alts as I do have around 3 to level up to 80 as well.. with 2 at lvl 40+. They are forcing us to farm dailies... -_-"

My understanding is that the new instance will drop Champion's seals (or whatever they're called) so you shouldn't be at much of a disadvantage for long regarding the Squire. (I'd give you my badges if I could...)